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Kurt Vile Announces New Album and Tour, Shares 10-Minute New Song “Bassackwards”

Bottle It In Due Out October 12 via Matador

Sep 10, 2018By Christopher Roberts

Kurt Vile has announced a new album, Bottle It In, and shared a new song from it, the near 10-minute long "Bassackwards," via a lyric video for the song. Bottle It In is due out October 12 via Matador. It includes "Loading Zones," a new song Vile shared in August via an amusing video for it (it was one of our Songs of the Week). The album features Cass McCombs, Kim Gordon, and others. He has also announced some more tour dates for 2019. Watch the "Bassackwards" lyric video below, followed by the album's tracklist and cover art, as well as Vile's upcoming tour dates.

Bottle It In is the follow-up to 2015's b'lieve i'm goin down..., although last fall Vile teamed up with Courtney Barnett for a collaborative album, Lotta Sea Lice. Bottle It In was recorded over the course of two years in various cities (including Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Portland), with various producers (including Rob Schnapf, Shawn Everett, and Rob Laakso, a member of his backing band The Violators). The majority of Bottle It In was recorded at Tarquin Studios in Bridgeport, Connecticut, with Peter Katis (Interpol, the National) engineering and producing. The album also features Warpaint's Stella Mozgawa, Mary Lattimore, Farmer Dave Scher, and Lucius.

Vile says in a press release that all the travelling around influenced the album: "For a while I was terrified of flying, so I would be listening to whatever country songs I was obsessed with. I'd have George Jones blasting in my ears. Or, I would be reading something about country music. Or, I would start writing songs in that flash of being afraid, being swallowed by life. I'm up there on a plane drinking wine because like everybody else I'm afraid to die. And I wrote 'Hysteria' up there."

Of the album's emotional weight, Vile adds: "It's like that moment on the airplane, when you're on your way somewhere and you have that burst of panic. When you're terrified of dying, that's when you want people to know you love them."